Quick Start

This guide covers the minimum steps to start using markymark. Pick the path that matches your setup — editor integration or AI agent tooling.

Before you start

markymark works on a folder of files, not individual documents. Open a folder (or workspace) containing .md files to enable cross-file features like navigation and reference detection.

If you don’t have Markdown files handy, create two test files to follow along:

mkdir ~/markymark-test && cd ~/markymark-test
echo -e '# Welcome\nSee [[notes]] for details.' > index.md
echo -e '# Notes\nBack to [[index]].' > notes.md

For editor users

If you installed the VS Code extension, it starts the language server automatically when you open a .md file — no additional configuration needed.

Open your workspace and try these features:

See diagnostics. Open a file with a broken wiki link (e.g., [[nonexistent]]). The link is underlined with a warning. Duplicate headings in the same file are also flagged.

Navigate. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) and click a wiki link or heading reference to jump to its definition. This works across files in your workspace.

Search symbols. Press Ctrl+T (Cmd+T on macOS) to open workspace symbol search. Type a heading name to find it across all files.

Find references. Right-click a heading and select “Find All References” to see every document that links to it.

Rename. Right-click a heading and select “Rename Symbol.” All wiki links and markdown anchors pointing to that heading update automatically across the workspace.

Browse outline. Open the document outline panel (Ctrl+Shift+O / Cmd+Shift+O) to see a hierarchical tree of headings and tags in the current file.

For AI agents

If you installed the Claude Code plugin, MCP tools are available immediately — no manual server startup needed.

To run markymark as a standalone MCP server:

markymark --mcp /path/to/your/workspace

Try these tools to get oriented:

Get a document outline. Call get-outline with a document URI to see its heading structure:

get-outline: { "uri": "file:///path/to/README.md" }

Search across files. Call search-symbols to find headings and tags by name:

search-symbols: { "query": "installation" }

Find cross-references. Call find-references to see which documents link to a specific heading:

find-references: { "uri": "file:///path/to/doc.md", "line": 0, "character": 0 }

Check for problems. Call get-diagnostics to detect broken links and duplicate headings:

get-diagnostics: { "uri": "file:///path/to/doc.md" }

The full tool list includes 15 tools covering workspace management, search, graph analysis, and more.

Next steps

The editor setup guides cover detailed configuration for VS Code, Neovim, and Claude Code. The usage section walks through advanced workflows like workspace search, regex pattern matching, and refactoring across files.